The fire took only twelve minutes to destroy everything they had built together.
Twelve minutes—that’s all it took for the house on the hill, the dream they had poured seven years into, to collapse into soot and silence. Their cottage in the Nilgiris, once bursting with color, music, and arguments over how to stack books, now stood as a ghost of beams and embers.
Aarav and Meera stood barefoot on the damp grass in their nightclothes, watching it fall. The smell of burning pine filled the air. Firefighters doused what was left, but it was too late. The flames had already taken the walls they painted together, the handmade dining table they carved initials into, the reading nook where Meera would fall asleep mid-sentence.
“I saved your journals,” Aarav said, voice low as though afraid to disturb the smoke. “They were on the nightstand.”
Meera nodded, unmoving. “Thanks.”
They didn’t cry. Grief hadn’t caught up yet. All that existed was disbelief and the silent ache of something irreplaceable slipping away.
They were offered a friend’s spare cottage a few kilometers downhill. It was pristine, air-conditioned, with wide windows and white linen. It felt wrong. Too clean, too hollow. The walls didn’t echo with laughter or carry the smell of cinnamon tea.
Meera stopped speaking much. She would sit for hours by the window, sketching lines that led nowhere. Her canvases stayed blank. Aarav tried to fill the silence with tasks—insurance paperwork, sourcing temporary furniture, browsing properties they couldn’t afford.
Every morning he made her jasmine tea, like always. And every morning, she let it go cold.
One evening, he tried again. “We’ll rebuild. I found an architect who specializes in eco-homes. Maybe this time we can have that greenhouse you always talked about?”
She looked up slowly, her face unreadable. “It won’t bring it back.”
“I know. But maybe we can—start again?”
She gave a sad, tilted smile. “Aarav, I don’t know if I can start again. Not like before.”
His stomach twisted. “You think we’re done?”
“I think… I don’t know who we are anymore when we’re not wrapped up in that life. The fire didn’t just take the house. It took the illusion that everything was unbreakable.”
In the weeks that followed, they moved like shadows. The silence wasn’t hostile—it was just numb. They still shared a bed, but their backs faced each other. Still lived in the same space, but like strangers renting the same sorrow.
One morning, Meera packed a small duffel bag. Aarav stood by the doorway, dread coiling in his chest.
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know yet. Somewhere that doesn’t smell like ash and memory.”
He didn’t stop her. Maybe he should have. But something told him she wasn’t running away from him—she was searching for the version of herself that had been scorched along with the house.
“I still love you,” she said quietly, gripping the bag.
“I know,” he whispered. “I still love you too.”
And she left.
Time passed, as it always does. Slowly, awkwardly, painfully.
Aarav rented a smaller place closer to town. A one-bedroom flat with peeling walls and a balcony where he grew basil and tomatoes. He took up photography again, something he hadn’t touched since they moved into the hills. He found joy in shadows, in detail, in contrast.
He didn’t date. Didn’t really laugh. But he breathed.
Meera, meanwhile, drifted—from Himachal to Goa to Rishikesh. She attended art residencies, meditated, painted furiously. Her early work was chaotic—jagged lines, burnt hues, eyes full of questions. But slowly, green returned to her palette. Then cobalt. Then warmth.
She didn’t call. Neither did he. But they followed each other’s lives quietly—through online portfolios, shared friends, whispered mentions in social circles.
Nearly two years after the fire, Aarav found himself in a gallery in Bengaluru. The exhibit was called “Ashes to Art.” He hadn’t planned to go. But her name had caught his eye on a poster stuck to a coffee shop door, and his feet had moved before his mind did.
He wandered through the gallery, heart pounding, until he found it: a large canvas titled “Reconstruction.”
It showed a burnt-down house in a valley blooming into wildflowers. The ashes turned into blossoms. A single wall remained, covered in vines and hope. The caption below read:
We do not return to what was. We begin again, with what remains.
He felt the air shift behind him. Meera stood there, hair longer, eyes the same.
“You came,” she said softly.
He didn’t answer immediately. Just kept looking at the painting. “I think I was always meant to.”
They stepped outside after the exhibit, coffee cups in hand, sitting on a bench beneath a tree that didn’t seem to belong to any season.
“You really never rebuilt?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I tried to. Drew up plans, made calls. But every sketch looked like a copy of the life we had. And I didn’t want a replica.”
She smiled faintly. “I thought leaving would give me answers. But it only taught me new questions.”
“Like?”
“Like whether love survives when the story ends differently than we expected.”
He looked at her then, really looked. “I think love survives when we let it evolve.”
They sat in silence for a while, not awkward but full of unspoken understanding.
“I bought a small cabin,” Aarav said finally. “Nothing grand. Just a place with one wall left intentionally blank.”
“Why blank?”
“For something new. Maybe a mural. Maybe… photos. Maybe a place where we create what comes next, not what was.”
She blinked back a sudden emotion. “Do you think what comes next could still be us?”
He reached out and took her hand. “I don’t want the fairytale anymore, Meera. I want the fire-tested version. The one that burns, cracks, but doesn’t collapse.”
She let out a shaky breath. “Then let’s not rebuild the house. Let’s build a life that knows how to rise from it.”
And in that moment, there was no grand kiss, no orchestral swell of music. Just two people, carrying their scars and their hope, willing to try again.
Not from scratch. But from truth.
THE END
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